


Betelgeuse

by Midna_Ronoa



Series: Vegas Lights [2]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Bisexual Character, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Pining, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Slow Burn, because of how slow it burns, it could even be called a sloth burn, lots of pining, mentions of BDSM, the slowest of burns, you'll have to fight me over Greg not having a cat in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2019-12-26 08:43:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18279695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Midna_Ronoa/pseuds/Midna_Ronoa
Summary: "Nick’s known he’s not straight since he was sixteen."A retelling of what went down on the fourth year Nick Stokes worked at Crime Lab and his relationships there—with a twist.





	1. 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY EVERYONE! I'M STILL ALIVE!  
> So first, sorry for the tremendous delay, but college is hard and takes all my time and energy away so it's been difficult to manage writing and studying while also trying to stay healthy.  
> Second, I wasn't expecting the amazing response 'Sirius' got, so THANK YOU for reading, for reviewing, bookmarking and leaving kudos, it really means the world to me and helps a lot.  
> I've divided into two this second part, because it's pretty long and I didn't want to dump it in one go. I finished writing it around August 2018 but just got round editing it in February.  
> Some things before getting started:  
> -Spoilers for the entirety of Season 2 (even if this first chapter only encompasses until chapter 11of said season)  
> -This can be read as a stand alone but it is the second part of a series  
> -BIG TW// for mentions of past child abuse, even if they are not heavy in detail you know with what we are dealing around here  
> Finally thanks to [ Nerel ](https://brokenmobious.tumblr.com/) for being an amazing friend and beta-reader as always.  
> Hope you enjoy the read!

I.

Nick’s known he’s not straight since he was sixteen.

It dawned on him while visiting one of his friends’ house for a class project on biology. He doesn’t remember much about Matt Horton—knows that he moved to work to New Mexico; lost track of him as soon as Nick moved away from Austin—but boy, does he remember his older brother. He remembers going to the toilet and finding the other man drying his hair, only a pair of jeans on and a towel resting on his shoulders. The image was cliché as heck but Nick _knew_ , when he felt as if someone had just lifted the air out of the room and his stomach churned, that this was what other guys felt about girls, what they felt when they whistled down the corridors the days Jessica Johnson was wearing a shorter than usual skirt. It took Nick time to realize that in his case attraction to both genders was more or less even.

By university, he had already had a series of girlfriends, only ever got to flirting with a couple of guys when he went away to Florida on Spring break; afraid of doing it at college, too close to home, too close for anyone to notice. After graduating he didn’t last more than four years in which he used to believe was his dream job. Maybe he was done with his colleagues at DPD and their prejudices, maybe with his family and their expectations, but going to Las Vegas and accepting a post at Crime Lab suddenly became an amenable choice; he had always had a thing for science and his college minor had not been in chemistry for nothing. His parents were glad he did, happy that he would be away from all the ‘action’, which Nick hadn’t even got to the point of experiencing, but to be honest? He didn’t care. He wanted away from all of it, a chance to be who he wanted to be.

Working at Crime Lab becomes one of the best experiences of his life, by the time he gets to be a level three CSI he is brimming with energy and hope. He met Warrick almost as soon as he got to Vegas; they both entered the CSI program at the same time and became friends quickly. Nick thinks he had a pretty strong crush on him when they started talking to each other, it subsided soon because if being at the force had taught him two things, these had been: people with his inclinations are pretty heavily shamed upon in this line of work and that his friend had definitely a thing only for the ladies. And this is fine by Nick, mighty fine, but it also makes it even more difficult, because he’s spent his life repressing his feelings and he was expecting to get a bit of spice here in Vegas—or at least to understand why having them felt so _wrong_.

His first time with a man is when he’s 27 and it’s a fumbling, messy relationship that lasts less than a week, as most of his relationships do. Nick also calls it his first time even if they only got to third base—if you can even call it that with guys. He doesn’t talk with anyone about it; he knows that the other guy—Rob—was younger than him, knows that Nick was just another guy for him. Nick doesn’t operate like that though, that’s why he remembers his name, still has his number saved on the phone; one-night stands have barely ever worked for him. Warrick laughs at him and calls him a romantic—even if to Warrick he talks about Rob as if he was Rebecca—, but hey, he needs more than two months dating to gift a girl a 300 buck purse, to which Warrick scowls and doesn’t invite him over to play on his Dreamcast for a week.

He meets Greg when Nick’s a CSI level two, he’s passed the theoretical tests and just has to keep helping with cases to get promoted. Greg is new, fresh, smart and as fast-paced as the Strip at rush hour. He speaks fast, acts fast and changes his looks even faster. Nick wouldn’t say he falls for him immediately—Greg has charm, Nick will give him that, and the flirting catches him a bit off ward but he thinks that he learns how to deal with it after the first three weeks, except he doesn’t, and Greg keeps surprising him in the wildest imaginable ways. Warrick cannot stomach the kid at first, but as the lab tech had explained after having been working with them for a while “I grow on people, like moss, but I’m far more attractive and smell better” Greg had winked in Nick’s direction after saying that and God knows that Nick had to run away because of how furiously he had blushed.

They get closer and friendlier as months go by, Rick teases Nick about it, he pays no heed, knows that his little infatuation won’t grow fonder. He already dated most of the girls on the precinct on his first years, gives it another try with a few inspectors and a lady from days; doesn’t come out well. He also tries dating a doctor that he met on a case after accompanying a victim to Desert Palm; they barely get to a month.

Then the whole being held at gunpoint happens, Nick is almost sure that his life can’t take a turn for the worse, except that Greg sees him and hugs him, lets him know all that stuff that only makes the floodgates break once he’s at home on his own. He tries to distance himself after that, tries to put his thoughts in order, because he knows too damn well that Greg’s a coworker and that he shouldn’t be feeling this way about a simple hug, yet Greg doesn’t relinquish, keeps coming at him with his nice coffee and crazy exploits.

Nick meets Kristy in a case, Kristy who’s nice and seems to truly care about him and about what he does. He’s well aware that it could all be a façade, an elaborate trick to take him to bed, but he has to see the good in people, otherwise, he knows he’d stop being true to himself. So they dance around for six months, he encounters her more than once in odd cases here and there, she’s not the most attractive girl he’s met, but she’s nice and seductive and has soft brown eyes… Nick knows that he shouldn’t want anything to do with her, because she is a prostitute and if he gets caught doing this, he won’t hear the last of it at work, but she truly seems interested and they won’t have many chances to date without raising unwanted suspicions, so he lets go for one night, breaks his own biggest taboo.

And it happens, ricochets so hard that it almost gets him fired.

She’s murdered and Nick is suspect number one. He goes all the way and beyond to prove his innocence, not only to the whole damn department and his friends but also to her goddamn pimp. It breaks him that no one is going to pay for her funeral. Nick does. It breaks him that he’s let what that guy told him about her hurt so much. It hurts that he fell so fast for someone he didn’t even get to know. He feels numb for weeks.

After that, many people on the lab and precinct change their opinions on him or, at least, don’t see him as the untainted golden boy anymore. Greg seems more open though, closer, and Nick appreciates how he behaves—that despite Nick’s obstinacy with looking indifferent, Greg still flirts with him and treats him the same way he did before. He understands that objectively he should be more thankful for what the tech did along Catherine, that the thing that should have made them bond tighter is that Greg saved his ass, his brain always brings back the hug though, the smell of vanilla and mint in Greg’s hair and clothes, the sensation of comfort when those gangly arms tightly wrapped around his torso.

Going for breakfast with him doesn’t help at all. Greg’s so open, so sincere, that sometimes Nick wants to let him know about everything; even if Nick knows he can’t, even if he knows all too well why he separates work and his private life, why he prefers to compartmentalize.

After the Strip Strangler case he notices something though; everyone in night shift, they are like a family, a dysfunctional and not properly working one, but they are, even if Warrick is the one that’s ever gotten close to him, he knows that he holds Cath and Sara dear, Brass has turned out to be some kind of grouchy uncle, and Grissom has been the closest to a father figure he’s had since he left Texas—so maybe trying to let Greg be part of it doesn’t sound so bad, even if he has to be the weird and crazy cousin. Even if Nick’s not sure if that’s the role he wants Greg to fulfill.

 

II.

It’s always the same for him when a kid’s involved. The urge to solve the case as quickly and as cleanly as possible takes him, he doesn’t even go home for breaks despite knowing that he can’t operate like that, that he won’t be able to do shit properly if he isn’t well rested. The feeling of wanting to rip everything apart because the world shouldn’t be so hard on everyone, shouldn’t be so hard on kids… It is though, and there’s nothing on his hands to be done except trying to give them and their families peace, some kind of solace while he drowns the nightmares and bad thoughts with alcohol and questionable alone time spent overthinking.

When Dylan Buckley gets killed, it’s all like a too lucid nightmare because almost from the very beginning Nick’s convinced that what went down at the therapist’s house is much worse than what it seems. He works on autopilot for the first half of the case, gets precise and careful as soon as they get a warrant for the house. Catherine catches up fast, because she has been a CSI for far too long not to notice how intense Nick gets around the shrink when talking to her, especially after they bring up statutory rape. He forces himself not to cry when he tells her about the babysitter, Anne, raven-haired and blue-eyed Anne. Anne who was their closest neighbor’s niece and had come visiting from Philly. Anne with cold hands but with a much colder gaze. Nick remembers too vividly what she did, as if it hadn’t happened twenty years ago, he has to spend almost ten minutes in the toilet trying to pull himself together when the memories come rushing like a stream after the snow melts.

They close the case and despite no sexual abuse having been committed, he still feels let down on so many levels… He liked the shrink for it, but not the mother. That had surprised him. That had made him leave the interrogation room on a rush and go to the corridor to clear his mind. _There’s some people out there that you are supposed to trust,_ the words come echoing in his own voice, mocking, almost laughing at his own expense.

After filling out all the paperwork he ends up vomiting in the bathroom that’s in the locker room—again. It’s even more disgusting than it sounds because he hasn’t eaten anything since that hot dog at seven a.m. and, fuck, does it smell. By the time he’s cleaned himself and changed shirts he encounters Greg sitting on the bench that’s closer to Nick’s locker, he seems concentrated on something that’s lurking on the floor and as soon as he hears Nick coming in, he stands up abruptly and looks him in the eye. He’s not sporting his usual cheery look, his smile is there though, his hazel eyes fixed on Nick’s.

“I promise I wasn’t following you, I swear… I just saw you a bit under the weather last time you came over and I thought ‘Hey, maybe your buddy Nicky could use some company’ and dunno, maybe you wanted to have something to eat” Greg laughs nervously, glances downwards for a couple of seconds. He looks rather self-conscious, all this being really new to Nick because he wasn’t aware that Greg could do _shy_. “But you know, if you’re unwell or not feeling like it I can…” he motions a couple of times towards the corridor.

Nick smiles a bit because he’s now noticing a lot of stuff about Greg’s appearance and body language. To begin with, he’s changed shirts, he’s now wearing a green one with palm trees on it that to be honest, is horrible, but looks good on Greg, kind of natural taking into account what Nick’s seen of his wardrobe. He’s also shaved patterns on the side of his head, proof that’s been some months since the last time he bleached or dyed, although his hair’s still looking more put up than when Nick visited him on the lab and he doesn’t know whether it’s a mere coincidence or Greg tidied himself up to ask him out.

“Don’t you have a social life to sustain?” Nick asks, half mocking half curious; because he hasn’t seen Greg as socially active as he used to be over the first two years that the Californian had worked at Crime Lab.

“I mean you technically are part of it, but you don’t look like you wanna go clubbing right now, plus it’s kinda late for that.” Greg smirks, deflecting any kind of harm that could have been done by the previous statement “C’mon, my treat, at least free food has to be enough to lure you.”

And Nick has to accept that his coworker sounds a bit desperate, he nods though and finds himself surprised by how much Greg’s satisfied laugh warms him from the inside.

“I’ll wait at the parking lot, ok? Don’t leave me hanging if Warrick asks you out too—I know you are a busy man.”

Nick understands that this is Greg’s way of granting him space, time to brace himself or to say no, he ends up seeing the other man leave the room while he opens his locker to grab his jacket and wallet, eyeing himself in the mirror. He looks paler than usual, and he’s aware that the dark circles under his eyes are quite preoccupying, but by the time he gets out of the lab with his sunglasses on and sees Greg propped against the hood of his Jetta while his foot goes up and down in an insistent rhythm Nick knows that he’s not going to regret this—much.

They get to the diner they went to last time, which doesn’t surprise Nick at all, despite his rogue aspect Greg does seem to have a certain appreciation for comfort zones. Nick heads for a booth today, needs the privacy, even if he’s here with Greg and he’s the least private person Nick knows. He does see Greg hesitating before taking a seat in front of him though. Nick hasn’t even taken off his cap when the waitress greets them, Greg asks for the same he did last time if he remembers well; Nick’s not sure if he’ll be able to stomach anything at all, so he only asks for coffee.

It arrives almost immediately and by then Greg’s already on his first rant of the morning about how they should hire more help in DNA because he barely makes it out alive with the loads of work he has to manage. Nick nods, gives a short answer from time to time and recognizes all too well the hesitation with which Greg regards him. It reminds Nick of how Catherine stared and talked after telling her about what happened, after he told her about… _that_. Nick’s too well aware that he wears his heart up his sleeve, his frat brothers used to joke about it, Warrick still does.

Greg’s now talking about _Gladiator_ , which he couldn’t watch in cinemas when it came out but he’s finally gotten round to and seems to be a very big fan of Ridley Scott, which doesn’t surprise Nick in the slightest knowing what a big fan Greg is of _Alien_. Nick’s about to try his coffee when he notices that Greg’s mouth is now closed and that his eyes are fixed on him, on his movements and gestures, on how he fills his cup with a bit more cream, on how he gets the whole packet of sugar in the mug by accident.

The diner is much more animated at this time of day; people seem to come in every couple of seconds, quite a popular location for lunch. Nick expects to hear the follow up to what Greg was saying about fake blood and good sfx wound makeup, but what he gets instead leaves him completely quiet and concentrated on the other man.

“You know… I had this boyfriend when I was living in New York, he hated going to the cinema with me, said that I was too overexcitable and usually just spent the whole film telling me to shut up” Greg’s wearing a guarded expression while sharing this, his eyes now on the food.

He’s eating slowly, seems concentrated on a crumb that’s floating on his mug. Nick stares, because _holy shit_ Greg just said boyfriend which, to be fair, is not totally unexpected as Greg does seem like the kind of guy who swings both ways. It makes Nick feel relieved though, because he feels like his attraction is not now some futile thing that will never be corresponded, but Greg’s well… _Greg_ —full of life Greg, eager and excitable Greg who doesn’t look like the kind of guy who would appreciate Nick’s company out of work, plus he’s a dude but… But they are here now at Greg’s own volition, they are here because Greg invited him.

 Nick notices that he’s been staring for far too long when he doesn’t hear anything else. Greg’s now looking at him with his brows furrowed, the shyness seems to have been cast away and something in between anger and sadness has replaced it.

“I… didn’t know you also dated guys” Nick blurts out, which is a stupid thing to say because Greg just came out to him, which he’s not sure whether it is a common occurrence. He knows that it’s taken him courage to do so though, so he offers him the sincerest smile he can muster after all that’s happened today.

“Is that a problem?”

Nick’s never heard Greg getting defensive until then, he shakes his head almost immediately after hearing him, which just makes the other man frown a bit more.

 “You sure? Because you know, it’s not easy coming out to your friend from Texas while he looks at you like if he was… I don’t know” he gestures a bit wildly in the air with his hands “evaluating cattle at a county fair”.

Ok, that does make Nick chuckle and go for an offended look.

Greg smiles after that, way calmer and his shoulders sag a bit before he props his back against the headrest in the couch he’s sitting in, coughs a couple of times and drinks a bit more of his coffee, eyeing Nick the whole time before he… blushes?

“As I was saying—this guy I dated, he was nasty as fuck, we went out for a really long time like, two years? It sounds like not much but believe me it was—and I had this dependency were I sought his approval for almost everything, ended up doing drugs and a lot of stuff that’s not the point that I wanted to get across but… he was the kind of person that shows you a ton of new experiences and you want to reciprocate and that leads to a shitty dependent relationship that sucks? Like having a big brother that wants to have sex with you—wait, not like that” Greg is getting even more flustered by every second that passes, even though he’s also trying to explain himself, so every reason that Nick could have had to frown at what Greg’s saying is gone. “What I meant is that, in a nutshell, he was shitty, I didn’t really love him and it took me a whole year away from him and of therapy to realize that. So you know, therapy is great!” and Nick’s just realized that Greg’s not only opened up to him but also came out of the closet, even if he was scared and shy about it, just because he saw that he was not feeling alright, just because he saw how he reacted to today’s case. “Plus my mom is a psychologist… so I’m used to being told that people need help sorting out—whatever’s going on in there” he explains with a short laugh, pointing at Nick’s head.

“You are the second person that’s told me about seeing a shrink today” Nick says with a wry smile, licking his spoon, his eyes trained to the top of Greg’s head because the younger man seems to be really interested in his coffee once again. “Cath told me it didn’t help her much…but again, maybe she just went there to bitch about what an asshole Ed is” he laughs, and Greg echoes him softly. They are staring at each other now, and Greg looks as if he opens his mouth he’ll start mumbling stuff so Nick takes the initiative “I’m not… really comfortable enough to talk about this with you G, don’t take me wrong—”

“No, no, I understand—we are not that close” God, do those four words hurt when Greg utters them, because he can see the pain there too, but it’s something Nick can fix, with time—not the point of the conversation now though.

“I think we can get there— G, I promise I’ll look into it, thanks man…”

The heavy silence is gone and Greg is looking at him with a new glint on his eyes. It could be Nick’s imagination though, even though he’s known this guy for two years, almost one has passed since they started getting a bit more comfortable around each other, hanging out from time to time, talking about stuff that is not videogames or football—Nick’s convinced Greg doesn’t enjoy the latter that much.

Nick knows that this is enough for now, an occasional breakfast with some talking which to be honest, he hasn’t done in years, because Warrick’s a great guy, don’t get him wrong, but Greg is different—so different from Rick in his way of interacting with Nick, and he appreciates that, deeply, even if he’ll probably never put it into words because it’d get even more awkward and Nick’s never been great at the whole talking and feelings department, but maybe, if he ever gets better he’ll be able to thank Greg properly, even if he’s not too sure of what Greg does to him, or of what it makes him feel, but he’ll get down to it… eventually.

 

III.

Sara meets Hank the paramedic in the case with the liquefied body. It’s almost worth buying popcorn just to see her dancing around him while he tries to decide if he likes her enough in spite of the smell.

After that case Nick guesses they are dating, or at least seeing each other, and by God does he try to help Sara with the whole thing, because Nick’s dated less and less since he started working the graveyard shift, but Sara’s case is even worse than his, as she looks as if she hasn’t been out with anyone that’s not a colleague since college. Plus, seeing how Greg eyes them every time he encounters Nick and her talking in the break room is cute.

It actually is one of the things—along with the easy banter, complicit gazes and inside jokes— that make Nick notice that the three of them have developed a different kind of friendship to what he’s used to. Because Warrick and he have a closeness sustained in trust and in other manly values that he doesn’t want to think about out loud or dwell deep into because they’d make him snort due to how forced and ridiculous they are. Sara, on the other hand, is easy; she is a nerd, nice and seems to enjoy his company, which is fine. Greg keeps flirting with both of them—sometimes at the same time—which is all too disconcerting for Nick, but Greg’s Greg and Nick finds it excruciatingly hard to dislike him, especially after all that’s been happening in between them during the last year; so maybe his affection for the lab-tech only grows fonder.

They don’t meet after work or anything, but whenever they are together Nick does feel that sense of familiarity reinforced, a feeling that he can trust these people, that he can rely on them. He doesn’t talk about it with Warrick nor with Sara or Greg, but something must slip up when he is speaking with his eldest sister over the phone.

“Did you meet somebody at work?” Jess asks, conversationally and innocent enough.

Nick laughs, eyeing one side and the other of the room; he can almost see the sly smirk on her lips despite the miles that separate them.

“Naw, don’t be silly. Just everything’s been nice lately, same as always—”

“Nicky you’re the worst liar I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, but please do continue” she titters and Nick refrains from teasing, knowing that in a verbal showdown he’s got nothing to do against her.

“During this year… I don’t know… things have been nicer, a new girl came in, I became closer to another guy, Rick’s doing better with the gambling…” he elaborates, talking slowly, being far more conscious than he usually is when speaking, because he knows that even a mild inflection could tick Jess off. He doesn’t mention Kristy; he still goes there though, still visits her grave and cleans it in very bad days—those days he leaves work tired and heavy, with his faith in people reduced to the thin circle his friends and family compose.

“Do those two have names?” he can hear Mac calling Jess on the background, she answers, covers the speaker for a while “Wait” she tells Nick, as if she could predict that he’s going to hang up if she leaves him hanging for too long.

Nick waits, for a couple of seconds actually ponders what’s made the last year better. He earns more and that’s a bonus, it’s not like Grissom has let him operate solo like Rick—so that only leaves out his colleagues; because having to pull doubles almost weekly is not really an improvement, mind you. He hears Jess coming back and a squeal that makes him laugh.

“Good morning, uncle Nick!” that’s got to be Billy, Nick laughs and says hi before he hears a soft cough on the other side, signal that the phone has been returned to its respective owner.

“So?”

“Oh, yeah—about my coworkers. Greg’s the DNA tech, good guy, maybe a bit young to be working where he is but can’t deny that the kid’s got energy. The newcomer’s Sara. I think she’s my age or so, really smart and kinda hard when you don’t keep up with her pace, you’d like them both” he explains briefly, knows that when Jess comes visiting like she did after he had moved she’ll force him to get one out on a walk with them. “How are mom and Cisco doing?” he asks trying to save himself more answers that will make him stay uncomfortably awake past his bedtime.

“Mom’s fine, a bit worried because Josie’s just finished college—again, seems dead set on going to work to LA” she points out with a soft laugh “She admires you a lot, ya know? Every time mom asks her about boyfriend’s and stuff she brings you up—been setting a good example for the young’uns, Pancho” she giggles again, it does make Nick chuckle too.

“I take the rest is just the same as always?”

“Same old, same old. Stuff around here doesn’t change much, hope that Vegas’ a lil’ less boring” Jess answers with a sigh “But really Nicky, you gotta take care of yourself, call mom a bit more often instead of waiting for her, send a letter with a picture… that kind of stuff” she enumerates in a monotone.

“You know I do and the job’s safer, you know that too! Don’t tell me you’re going to get full mom mode on me” he teases, only receives another soft sigh from the other side.

“You know I mean it, Nicky. Now go to bed, I have to take Bill to school before he comes back to say hi _again._ ”

They say goodbye and Nick hangs up with a soft smile on his face. Jessie was always his favorite sister; never could say it out loud without their mom reprimanding them. His father always judged him for that, Justice Stokes had always hoped for Nick to be close to Edward, but again, the age gap between the first one and him had avoided that big time; especially within a family of seven siblings were inevitably you had to forge alliances with those who understood you better, or at least those who took the time to do so.

 

IV.

The case of the scuba diver on top of a tree leaves Nick wondering if he made the weirdest career choice he could have ever made, because being an officer in Dallas had been hard, boring and sometimes outright insulting, but being a CSI for Clark County for the last five years has been, to put it simply, quite surreal.

The day just gets better when Greg scuttles out of DNA and out of the blue, gives Nick a whole master class on scuba diving and getting a wetsuit on, which he wasn’t expecting, at all, but at the same time proves to be quite insightful on what Greg enjoys and the case. The initiative from the other man doesn’t surprise Nick too much though, because as of lately Greg has tried really hard to approach them while they are analyzing evidence or trying stuff out… A year prior Greg wouldn’t have ventured out of DNA except for coffee, flirting, gossip, or a combination of the three of them in a turbo break that happened in between the break room and the reception desk.

Nick supposes that the day has been weird enough, but of course it has to happen, his sleep-deprived brain, about to pull a triple and not having had any kind of human contact except for a restless lab tech for the last five hours, slips up. So when Catherine confronts him about Greg being his new self-proclaimed lab-partner he laughs and mutters ‘Leggo of my Greggo’ which seems to sound innocent enough contextualized, but Jacquie, Mandy or whoever is doing prints today overhears and the phrase is out in the Lab in less than half an hour.

Nick ends up having to explain it to Warrick while they are having a beer, he doesn’t comment on Warrick being covered up in plaster and decomp, and Warrick, always the dutiful friend and partner, just laughs it off as being Nick’s fault for spending too much time as of lately around Greg. Nick’s not sure about that being the main reason, but prefers to agree with Warrick’s idea.

It doesn’t end there though, a week later Nick ends up in the break room updating the Jennings brothers’ case files, which is tiring and disheartening altogether. He’s seen Grissom get out of the holding cells covered in blood, Cath appears minutes later to briefs him on the whole incident with clipped sentences and a tight expression. She’s worried about Grissom; Nick is too and refuses to go home until his part of the paperwork is done.

Greg appears out of nowhere, holding a cup of Hawaiian Blue —Nick can smell it from where he’s sitting—which gets offered in his direction with a simple toss across the table. He props himself up against the smooth crystal surface with his brows knitted, eyes downcast and fixed on the shiny black lacquer of his mug.

“A tough one?” Greg asks. Nick knows that Greg wants out in the field, knows that sometimes he has doubts, has seen him eye the photos they set up when the scene is especially gruesome or bloody—his expression blank, his slim body wound up tight.

“Yeah, I had to process the whole thing on the holding cell—Cath didn’t want Grissom involved” he sighs, closing the manila folder he’s been holding a bit too tightly, photos and sheets of papers getting covered up instantly. “Thanks… needed it, but to be honest I was planning on stealing it from you” Nick laughs taking the first sip of coffee, holds the Styrofoam cup on his hands, warmth seeping through plastic; the city feels far too cold to be the first week of November.

“Oh my God, Agent Stokes, stealing from a coworker, how dare you?” Greg accuses in fake offense, putting his hand over his forehead.

“Don’t forget friend” he adds, seeing Greg bow backwards with his hand still up “and drama queen”.

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind the porn… but the coffee, you know how expensive this shit is? Imma need some compensation” Greg comments shrugging before he drains his drink in a couple of sips.

“You are not getting away with free dinner again” Nick interjects, hearing a soft swoosh from the door.

“Someone said free food?” that’s Sara peeking innocently from a corner with a broad grin on her lips, eyeing both men alternatively.

“No! Nuh uh, I’m not doing that again! Last time I had to pay for your and Rick’s food I nearly left a whole week’s pay there” Nick protests, but Greg suddenly seems far more interested and changes posture to more seductive one, his back tipping so he’s almost reclined against the table.

“I mean, if Nick doesn’t wanna invite us both it could always be you and me” Greg suggests raising an eyebrow, and where this man takes the energy from to flirt with everyone that passes him by, Nick has no idea.

“Not in your wildest dreams Greg” Sara retorts with a laugh, but doesn’t move from where she’s standing. It might be the combined looks that both direct Nick’s way or maybe the way Greg’s rotated his body, aiming his seductive pose towards him, that make him place a final signature before closing the folder once again with as much force as one can close a stationery piece made out of paper.

“Fine! But you don’t get to choose the place” he points in Greg’s direction and stands up, earning himself a wink from the other man and a childish whoop from Sara, who is far more satisfied than Nick’s ever seen her out of working hours. He’ll have time for regrets later when these two make up some sort of dumb excuse for not splitting when the moment of paying comes.

For the time being he’s going to enjoy this because he just had two hellish days that only led to more dead people than the ones that were when the case started, and if justice can’t be conducted, he’ll at least take his happiness from this brief moments—from Sara’s winning smirk when they pass Cath and Warrick in the parking lot and the bounce in Greg’s step that lasts until they walk out of the diner.

 

 V.

It’s not unusual for his university friends to come visiting, less if they were frat brothers. Nick has to admit that his interests have veered quite a lot since those days; he only plays softball now, left baseball behind almost entirely when leaving Texas, and won’t be getting totally wasted to gain respect from a bunch of highly impressionable teens on the near future. Yet, he hates feeling like he’s the only one that’s grown up since then. God… they are thirty!—some of them even older—and they keep behaving as if the world was theirs for their taking and vandalizing, flirting with every girl that crosses their path in a way that would leave Greg putting up his finger in an L shape on his forehead.

Nick’s still friends with almost ten of them; has gone to three stag parties and one wedding since he started living in Vegas. He usually puts up with their shit more than he should, tells himself that’s for the best, because conflict leads nowhere and it’s better to be in good speaking terms with everyone he knows in case something happens, knows that contacts are important in law enforcement, sometimes even vital. He has a change of heart in mid-November about the whole putting up with their shit though.

Casey Richards calls him one day, tells Nick his wife has filed up for divorce and that he’s coming to Vegas to unwind and let go because ‘he’s done with that bitch’. Chase had been dating his high school girlfriend during college, got married afterwards and Nick knows that sometimes these kind of relationships turned out alright, but experiences of people around him had shown that it had been almost a miracle that their marriage had lasted more than one year, so getting to the five year mark it’s like a feat that should have been celebrated. He agrees—a bit reluctantly—though, because a beer’s a beer and as he works nights so he’s not planning to do anything rash or reckless; they didn’t call him Mr. Dependable at high school for nothing, he’s pretty proud of having kept the reputation.

Nick shows Chase around, thinks about the most touristic routes to take him sightseeing but his plan changes completely once his friend drops his bags in his room at the Palms. Nick was prepared for a weekend of remembering their times back at ATM and maybe going to a casino, watching his friend gamble for a bit, pulling him away from the tables when he believed that he’d spent too much… They end up at a sports bar with a couple beers discussing only uni stuff, which is pretty far away for current Nick and most of it he wishes to forget.

By the time he’s halfway through his drink only an hour has passed and he’s _so_ done with the guy. Because Nick can put up with a lot—a lot of people have told him that he’s a good listener, but Chase’s attitudes and his way of regarding people make Nick remember why some people jump to a fast judgment whenever he tells them that he’s from Texas.

Chase copping a feel of a waitress’ butt while she’s passing by is what breaks the dam, makes Nick drag him out, his expression stern and brows knitted tight. It does earn him a couple of comments on how he used to be cool and not ‘play by the rules’, making Nick get so _GODDAMN_ tempted to call bullshit on that, because if his job in law enforcement has taught him something is that you get away with a lot if you are a white kid with money. When the guy starts ‘complimenting’ a couple of teens that are passing by Nick hauls him into the Tahoe and drops him off at the hotel lobby with a curt goodbye and the certainty that he’ll have a call from Chase the next day asking him out again because they had _fun_.

He drives until he reaches Warrick’s house, calls him beforehand because the last thing he needs is his best friend getting angry for interrupting a date or something up that alley—it had happened before, Nick’s not precisely inclined to risk it. Warrick seems to be cleaning or that’s what he tells him, so Nick gets in, shares another beer with him and tells him all about what happened. It’s not the first time it’s happened, Nick will try for it to be the last, and he envies Rick for his nonexistent experiences inside of a shitty fraternity, even if he’s heard enough from his childhood in the hood to know that his complaints sound childish.

Nick ends up grumbling a lot more about family expectations and misogyny than he could have foreseen, ends up sleeping in Rick’s couch because that’s what they usually do, support each other like this. It’s comfortable and familiar and they know that they are there for one another, even if Nick’s usually the one who does all the talking and Warrick’s never been too prone to share.

 

VI.

November’s a bad month. He thought that stuff didn’t get more unusual than scuba divers on top of trees, but it looks like it does. The case with Lady Heather turns his world upside down a bit more, and in some respects, he wishes he had asked for a week off for Thanksgiving, because, God, is it not worth it having to deal with all these people and their beating each other up fetishes.

It shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does when Greg proves to be an expert on the whole BDSM underworld, to the point where Nick starts to question if Greg’s used liquid latex on himself before, or maybe one of his partners has or maybe—he likes more twisted stuff, kinkier. Nick’s tired and he’d dare say that he feels a bit deterred by the whole ‘I discovered that my crush is far kinkier than I expected’ but to be honest, he doesn’t care—much—and wants to sleep. Maybe the next day they’ll only have to process a normal crime scene where the only latex are condoms and the sex’s normal and ‘vanilla’.

Greg finds him in the car park, Nick’s opening the Tahoe when he sees him come jogging from the lab, a black varsity jacket half pulled up and his laces not properly done.

“Hey, you forgot—” he’s holding up Nick’s wallet so that means he also left the locker half open, so much for talking to Archie for a bit.

“Thanks, G” Nick mutters taking it from Greg’s hands, letting their fingers brush, because even after everything that’s gone down, he still feels a small pang of hurt in his chest after Greg pulled him away when they were _so_ close together in the lab.

Before the case went all weird and shit Greg had been grumpy, less touchy, allowing between zero and none proximity between their bodies when they were inside the DNA lab. Now they are close, Greg’s almost bouncing on his toes, his energy seems to have been restored as well as his smile, but this one’s gentle, a far more relaxed one than the pervy and suggestive one he had had before as an answer to every bit of leather and metal they processed.

“Ya know… not everyone that likes S and M is a sicko… there’s a lot of normal people who like to unwind, or to take control for once—funny enough those who leave everything up in the other’s hands are the ones in control but… that’s not what I wanted to say” Greg is laughing, softly. He’s looking down onto the pavement and Nick swears that the sun can’t be hitting so hard that he’s able to see Greg’s ears getting red, but they are and when his head comes back up he stares intently into Nick’s eyes before licking his lips and swallowing afterwards “We are all human and… sometimes people need to let go.”

Nick almost forgets to nod in his direction before Greg skitters back onto his car, which today seems to be parked on the other side of the world. Nick doesn’t mind, he really doesn’t, but he spends the whole ride back home thinking about humans, normality, chains, whatever Cath had told him about being twisted and—Greg Sanders wearing a leather collar.

 

VII.

“Has Greg ever asked you out?” Nick is grateful that he’s not drinking anything at that very moment because if he was he would have spat it all over Sara.

“What!?” Nick asks in disbelief, because she’s eyeing him very seriously and he’s been completely taken aback by her comment.

“Don’t look at me like that! He keeps asking me out for dinner or he invites me to a cup of his coffee and at this rate I wanna know if that’s something he does with everyone else or just with me—‘cause I know for sure that he flirts with both of us” she sounds mildly annoyed but surprisingly smug about the last bit, as if she had seen something going on that Nick hadn’t.

He has to smile and look self-assured because otherwise, he knows he’s going to lose it.

“Nah, I mean I’ve spent time with him out of work but I wouldn’t call it a date… you know, we do what guys usually do—play games and watch football” Nick doesn’t mention that he’s only done that once with Greg, most of their other meetings have consisted in talking while eating too casually to be called some work formality; it’s painstakingly similar to what he does with Warrick, yet there’s something else there he’s not able to name.

“Oh… that still sounds pretty date-y to me” Sara chuckles, shaking her head to afterwards seat across Nick, one of her fingers going up to point towards him “but if he didn’t initiate it I wouldn’t count it as one…” she admits, her brows still furrowed.

“I think you’ve spent far too long inside the lab, you should go out, go hiking get some fresh air… maybe call your friend—Hank?” Nick asks maliciously, earning himself a dirty look, he tries to smile disarmingly and soften the blow “Ok, Greg did ask me out once, but again—that’s stuff dudes do. You wouldn’t say that Warrick and I are dating or something like that, would you?” mock laughter escapes his lips.

“I wouldn’t because Warrick’s been dating the lady that does prints in days for a month…” oh, that’s a low blow Sara Sidle and you know it “But it’s surprising that your first move hasn’t been denying that you don’t date guys, Nicky.”

He stares and afterwards stares some more, because Sara is now looking plain triumphant. Nick’s brain goes straight into ‘deny everything’ lane, but he knows that’s too late, Sara knows too much—he tugs a bit at the collar of his shirt trying to breathe regularly, trying to relax his body as much as he can.

“I don’t date guys” Nick says, that so far is the truth. He’s never taken a guy out on dinner, never gone to the cinema with them or tried courting them—if that’s what two men who are dating do. Because he doesn’t like men, not like that, not romantically—at least he thinks he doesn’t “I don’t swing that way Sara” he insists, going for a charming smile that just makes her frown.

“Sure… if you say so” she does not look convinced, _at all_ , her eyes now fixed in Nick’s, a guarded expression in them that betrays whatever Sara’s thinking.

Nick knows that she _knows_.

“I’m gonna go… file these reports I—” Nick trails off, picking up the forms and papers he’s been working with, trying to find an easy way out.

Sara of course, doesn’t agree with his escape route, as he grabs his wrist and pulls, practically making him stumble across the crystal table that they have in between themselves, her gaze stubborn and set.

“If you ever need to talk—I know I’m not the most experienced one, but I know a thing or two about being confused about inner stuff…” she doesn’t elaborate but Nick raises an eyebrow at that. Because Sara hasn’t just made any kind of big admission to him—but she has opened up, a smidge, after almost two years of her evading any kind of conversation that edged towards intimate as if it were toxic waste.

“Sure, see ya later” and he’s far too conscious that his accent has thickened and that Archie has given him an odd look upon seeing his face, but what had just happened had been too close home for Nick. Too close.

And at the same time, Nick’s not sure why, it had also felt a bit comforting, for someone relatively close to him to finally _know_.

 

VIII.  
Catherine gets kidnapped and only the ones in night shift get informed, they are told to treat it as if it was just another case. Everyone deals with it well, more or less—even if Nick can hear a hint of stress on Warrick’s voice when he speaks and Grissom gets a bit twitchy every single time someone calls and it ends up not being her. Nick thanks God that not a single soul has decided to kill or alert homicides tonight because there’s enough tension in the lab as they are.

When Sara appears with the finger, suddenly everyone finds something to do—some lead onto which to hold on to. He gets the silent treatment from her for the rest of the night.

“What did you do to her, bro?” Warrick asks when she ignores Nick on the restroom for the umpteenth time.

“How was I supposed to know that Catherine would remember what I told her? We were just chatting and I told Cath that Sara was going to meet someone, so I suggested a place and—”

“I mean, she’s also a CSI you genius… A special someone?”

“Rick don’t try giving me the third degree” Nick snorts, his mind still too busy thinking about what could have happened to Catherine, even if at the same time he’s still beating himself up for the whole Sara thing.

“Ok, cool man. Cover me up for a while though. Gotta go pick up Lindsey” Warrick snorts, leaving Nick with a raised eyebrow and a question on the tip of his tongue.

The night is slow and not knowing what to do next just makes it slower, after all, they can’t do much, because questioning the wife in the middle of the night won’t pull the trick, so Brass has told him to wait at least until sunrise. Nick gets back to old cases trying to clear his mind, closes a few old files, works until he hears giggles from somewhere close by. According to the clock in the corridor door, it’s just ten to eleven and the lab should be on peak activity, but apart from the whole Catherine thing... He hears laughter again and doesn’t have to look around much to identify the source. Lindsey’s inside DNA, he can see her propped up a stool with Greg on her back holding tight to the chair.

“You can’t tell anyone about this, because if you do we’ll get in trouble” he’s saying in a low conspiratorial tone that Nick just noticed he can hear because he’s getting closer to the source.

From his position he can also see Jacquie on her workspace glancing in Greg’s direction with a kind of motherly smile on her face; Nick has to ask himself if, past the initial surprise, his expression matches hers. Lindsey’s nodding now, eagerly, her head’s turned a bit to look at Greg dead in the eye.

“Pinky promise” she holds up her finger, to which Greg answers holding up his so they can both pull them together while they smile toothily.

“You gotta hold on tight, otherwise your mom will get really angry, Grissom too—and we don’t want that, right?” Lindsey answers this by enthusiastically shaking her head; she doesn’t look scared at all, seems overeager for whatever Greg has got prepared.

Nick doesn’t hear Warrick coming round the corner because he’s too focused trying not to laugh when Greg pushes the stool, making it spin at a speed that he hadn’t even known a stool could take. Lindsey is outright hollering with laughter and Greg seems not to be able to hold it for too long because he begins to move the chair through the lab while he keeps it spinning.

“I think we are far beyond Vegas by now!! Wanna go to L.A.!?” Greg asks taking the stool across the door slowing it a bit down so that Lindsey can prop herself up while she takes a better hold.

“To Europe!” she laughs, making Greg spin her a couple more times while they head down to A/V where Nick hears Archie following up their game. The shouts and giggles continue until Grissom comes strolling down the corridor and Nick decides to disappear right the way he came from just to avoid the quiet rage of their supervisor.

He doesn’t get much done after that, he’s sent down to question Mrs. Logan and after that the lover’s house. He feels bored to death by the time Catherine appears and he forces himself to greet her without letting out a sigh of relief or jumping straight up to hug her.

They catch the guy after a few twists and turns and of course they go to get a drink after everything because that’s the thing that pulling a double to help a teammate usually gets you. By the time he’s done filling his part of the report on the crime scene, he catches a glimpse of Greg, now out of his lab coat. The tech looks tired but satisfied, Nick even hears him humming something that through a speaker would surely sound far louder and worse.

“Didn’t know you liked kids” Nick murmurs softly when Greg is at an adequate distance, he doesn’t know what has led him to say that, but Greg who was on his tiptoes stooping to get a bag from the top of the cupboard, probably coffee, and is now staring at him with a playful smirk on his lips.

“Well Nick, I wouldn’t like to sound cliché, but I’m full of surprises” Greg lets out in a breath, the paper bag long forgotten and his hips propped against the countertop, soft chocolate eyes fixated on Nick’s, and damn does he feel a spark of heat travelling down his spine.

This is one of their silences, one of those that edges towards awkward but also to a kind of anticipation, to something that Nick doesn’t feel ready to embrace and that by the looks that Greg gives him the other man doesn’t feel on safe ground about either. Nick decides to stand up, his lips still firmly pressed and before he can make up a mildly passable excuse for what just happened, Catherine comes walking through the door all energy and a knowing smile that she flashes in his direction before she speaks.

“So here’s where you two were hiding. Come on! If you want to get something to drink you’d better hurry”

Greg makes some kind of smart ass response but Nick’s already with the file under his arm and fleeing towards the archive room. At least that’s the excuse he gives himself, he’s not running away, not from Greg. He never would… Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made I playlist while writing Nick's POV parts that you can check [ here](https://open.spotify.com/user/midna_ronoa/playlist/4g6DGcWWEVHzqkUdxlXW3y?si=0Z9d45AoQsGkCljzsQlBLg)  
> The second chapter will hopefully be posted in a month, but depends on how much time I have and on how the editing and writing of the following parts goes.  
> I'm super excited for the next chapter because you know, "Stalker" and "Chasing the Bus" happen around the second half of this season, and I LOVE those chapters ;)  
> Leave a review if you enjoyed the fic!! Feedback means the world to me.  
> (also you can tell me if you spot a typo or anything weird because English is not my first language)  
> You can also find me on [ Tumblr ](https://midwrites.tumblr.com/)


	2. 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for this being so late other than my mental health being shitty and college sucking my lifeforce completely for the past months.   
> Hope you enjoy!

IX.

Warrick never quitted gambling, or at least no longer than a year since he received that warning from HR.

When they met, Warrick already spent too much money and time at the casinos—he liked the cards, playing blackjack and poker, games that made him feel intelligent and superior. Nick never understood, but again he had never understood any of the vices in which people indulged themselves here in Vegas, even if he had drunk his ass off when he was a teen—in college, when he had an image to preserve. So when that lady’s case, Lillie’s, hits Warrick so hard, Nick forces himself to be there, because Warrick’s not the only one feeling like shit here, and Nick would love to say that it hadn’t felt awful when the one who he considered his best friend had shouted at him that they didn’t know each other—shit, it wasn’t a lie.

Nick had known Warrick for about five years and he didn’t feel like he knew him better than he knew Catherine or Sara or Greg, who he had met less time ago. They went out drinking together, they played video games and supported each other… but other than that? What did he know about Rick?

Nick wasn’t sure about what was he supposed to do. Talking was a must in every relationship according to his mother and sisters, but Warrick didn’t seem to enjoy doing that much, at least not with him or with anyone they both knew… _so_ different from Greg.

Nick almost hits his head with the steering wheel upon that thought.

He had just dropped Warrick home, who had vehemently refused any kind of interaction aside from monosyllables and company, so after letting him have a couple of drinks and win a hand Nick had driven him back. He had almost got out of the car to pat him in the back, Warrick hadn’t let him, just uttered a slurred thanks before he walked hurriedly to his front door.

And now he was here; his car stopped in front of an empty crosswalk, trying to order his thoughts in some way, because it was pretty hard trying to battle the fear of losing a close friend to put into the mix—whatever Sanders was doing to him, whatever his thing with Nick was about.

Nick gets home with dawn, which is pretty strange taking into account his usual schedule. He closes the door behind him, pulls the sun blocking curtains and lets himself drop on his bed completely dressed, barely getting naked before he forces himself to stop thinking, he can’t go on like this… Warrick cannot either.

When he gets to work the following night everything is back in place. Warrick regards him as he usually does, nothing different in his demeanor—maybe he’s being nicer, Nick doesn’t know. He is going to try to make things better though, at least with the stuff that’s on his hands.

Nick’s not too sure if communicating is one of those small things on his hands, but he’s going to try it out too.

 

 X.

The screech makes him look up, there’s nothing along the mountain trail aside from miles and miles of barren desert, small rocky promontories and low-density vegetation having been his only company for an hour. There’s a hawk up there, gliding, probably on one of the many currents that lead to Lake Mead, not too far away taking into account his position.

It’s difficult to tell due to the height and the sun, which is currently creeping down the horizon, but it looks like a Common Black Hawk to him—he regrets not having brought his binoculars for the third time in less than thirty minutes. The currents change, hot desert air now blasting on Nick’s face while he ascends the last bit of a steep slope that, upon conquering, discovers that leads onto an almost terrace-like top, the structure and shape of the hill visible from up there.

He checks his watch, still two hours to go before he has to get home, shower, and prepare for whatever Las Vegas has in stock for them tonight. So he’s not in a hurry, not today. Feels short of refreshing—ironically enough—to be here, to feel in control of stuff he doesn’t really have under his thumb.

His issues with Warrick have been there, running on the back of his head now for weeks. Grissom and his obsession with not trusting him alone coming close after, making him completely aware of how unlikely he is of getting that promotion that the whole department has been talking about in hushed tones for weeks now. Because Nick still feels lost, he still feels so far away from getting to be who he wants to be—a good CSI, a good friend, a good son…

His talk with Grissom more than a year ago has haunted him more than he’s willing to admit, and honestly he doesn’t know how he’s going to stop seeking that validation, at this point half of the time he does so unintentionally, because Grissom’s so supportive and so nice, that Nick wants to show him that it has been worth it… all his training, all the time spent together, Nick wants to prove him that he actually has become a better person thanks to this man.

He can see a buzzard far away from his position, circling a spot in between some low vegetation. Nick forces himself to think of small dead animals, of nature doing what it does best—kill. Immediately tries to get his train of thought back on track, death already takes too much of his time at work, no need to bring it home with him, or to the literal field.

A sudden flash of gold brings his thoughts back to land. The small tuft of golden fur scurries down the hill and makes Nick chuckle, watching the small fox make his way under a small rocky mound where he presumes it’ll have its den. He’ll have to watch something on desert fauna that’s not bird related for once, just for the sake of learning what its species was.

Its lanky figure had reminded him of someone else, someone that he’s not been precisely avoiding but that lately is making him feel—weird. And it’s not because Greg’s closeness or his flirting make him too uncomfortable, but because he’s feeling stuff to what he’s not used to. And when he finally assumed that he was not straight, when he finally came to grasp that he thought that maybe he could do with seeing how sex was with guys and leaving that behind, because honestly, he doesn’t see himself in a romantic relationship with a man… but Greg… Greg is trying to crawl into his brain, kick it into motion and make him rethink a lot of stuff that he thought he had settled long ago and left in the past.

He makes his way back to where he had parked the Tahoe in a record of forty minutes and gets home less than an hour later, spends maybe more time than strictly necessary under the cold spray of his shower, the golden tuft of fur still lingering in the back of his brain. Or maybe—it’s a head covered in dirty golden spikes.

 

XI.

He shouldn’t be here. Grissom shouldn’t have let him stay to begin with. He’s looking pale, so pale under the lights that the reflectors and siren’s cast. His whole body is shaking, Nick’s still impressed that the other man could bring such a flimsy jacket to an operation in the middle of the desert. His soft brown eyes are fixed on the ambulances first, they go for the bodies afterwards and stay there for far too long. When Nick gives him the notepad they don’t stray away from the page, he only looks up from time to time, a bit hunched over himself and still overeager to help, refusing to do anything that’s not following Nick around and he would find it admirable if he wasn’t so worried about Greg getting ill as soon as he gets home.

It gets worse though.

As soon as the bus driver starts having a seizure, Greg freezes in a way that’s got nothing to do with the temperature, he stops moving altogether and his eyes remain locked onto the blood that’s dribbling from the man’s mouth and nose. He keeps staring even when those eyes lose focus and the paramedics take the driver away. Nick’s not sure he’ll make it, makes his way into Greg’s direction nevertheless because he’s still gripping the notebook and pen in his hands; the metal spiral digging into flesh up to the point of drawing blood from the soft and pale skin of Greg’s hand.

Greg only apologizes after that—continues saying sorry through the whole night, holds up pretty well though, taking into account that he has not received any kind of field training. Nick almost spent the whole day sick after his first case—the image of the mother and her two children still vivid on his mind, doesn’t tell Greg about it, omits the details and tries to keep walking in the bus’ direction, aware that he has to report to Grissom and that getting away from all the noise and hustle and bustle may benefit Greg.

When Greg gets to go back to the lab with the bagged evidence Nick’s tempted to let him keep his jacket, it’s warm and maybe it’ll help him not to catch a cold, but after the thought flourishes it soon withers, as Grissom and him discover the body of the ex-con.

The jacket is also the kind of thing that would spark rumors in the Lab. Nick doesn’t want to think too much about which kind would be the most prominent but his—at this point over-saturated brain—goes for office romance, because if Greg was a lady they would have started by now, right? But why is he thinking about Greg as a she? Wouldn’t Nick be the she as Greg’s the one that keeps flirting with him? Do things actually work like that in-between two men?

He manages to shut his brain through hard work and overconcentrating in taking swabs from the blood puddles close to the body. He’s not too sure of why he’s doing it, they’ll probably belong to the man—but better be thorough, better not let his thoughts wander.

Nick stays around after that, sees the ambulances and doctors go, people start disappearing along with the darkness of the night. Only some of the survivors, the police and them, CSI’s, remain. He doesn’t get to go back to Vegas until almost midday, he’s tired and doesn’t have much to report, waits until he sees Sara around, gets informed about the truck and goes to the garage…

They don’t close up until almost nine p.m.; Grissom sends them all home, they deserve it after having pulled a double that got to the point of becoming a triple. That’s when he sees Greg; hunched over some papers, no music or movement abound, only quiet and a kind of peace inside DNA that’s almost unsettling. The door is open and Greg’s so quiet that for a second Nick thinks that this is how he looks when he’s asleep, despite knowing that it cannot be, because there’s no satisfaction or relaxation in the other man’s features and—Why the hell would he be thinking about Greg? How has the other man slipped so easily into his train of thought?

By the time Nick notices that he’s been staring, Greg’s looking at him too, yet his gaze is tired and sad, a deflated demeanor far away from what Nick’s used to seeing in the lab. Greg blinks and humorlessly laughs to afterwards haul himself up the stool, hitting the table with his knee before he’s completely standing up and looking at Nick, or at least during a few seconds before his gaze drops to the linoleum floor.

“Came to tell me how useless I am away from my tools?” Greg asks, a smile quirking on his lips, but it looks self-deprecating, angry, not particularly at anyone though.

“I was just going to tell you that the case’s over, thought that Grissom would have paged you” that does startle Greg, he raises his eyebrows and looks at Nick before dropping his gaze to his lab coat pocket, fishing his phone from inside and staring at its screen for a couple of seconds before staring back at Nick.

“Thanks, I, kinda didn’t notice, you know— things have been pretty loud around here” Greg signals around himself with his empty hand, his smile still wry and unsteady, the silence getting to be even more poignant and deafening, so Nick can only chuckle and shake his head before he looks at his partner—friend, he corrects himself.

“Gee man, you didn’t have to be so emphatic about not wanting me here” Nick relaxes his posture a bit and points towards the corridor “I was going to get Sara out of the lab, maybe go for a drink, if you wanna come…”  
“No! I mean, no I’m fine—it’s been a bit tiring and I prefer to hit the sack early just… wasn’t so prepared as I thought I was for what happened… sorry” he mutters, and Nick has to take a step closer for Greg to look at him in the eye, and he frowns a bit because Greg looks like he’s bracing for something, like if he is expecting that whatever Nick will say will hurt him beyond repair.

“Ok dude, just… you did well in the field, held your stomach better than I did on my first” he pats Greg’s chest softly, to what the other man answers with a soft laugh and an uncertain smile.

Nick doesn’t let his hand linger, knows that they are in a too open space and that he doesn’t know all too well what this contact could lead to, even if his hand has only caressed the rough fabric of the white lab coat and he is already trying to figure—what would have happened if he had gone for a hug?

 

XII.

He remembers seeing something red. Scarlet. Maybe a liquid? Blood?

He doesn’t remember much else afterwards.

He doesn’t remember being hurled through a window.

He doesn’t remember hitting the ground.

He does remember Warrick’s screams.

And _red_.

 

XIII.

He sleeps in Warrick’s sofa the first night. He technically doesn’t bat an eye, takes his painkillers and tells his friend that he’s rested well even if he looks like shit. They inform him that he won’t be able to go back to his house until at least three more days. Nick tells Rick that he’ll get a hotel room, but he refuses, almost forces Nick to stay.

The nightmares start as soon as Nick’s alone.

He’s checked his mail and he’s watching some film when he finally dozes off, after almost twenty four hours running on zero sleep. He dreams that he’s falling, it hurts—then there’s a body in a trench coat. Then there’s Crane staring at him—as if Nick was in a microscope, under scrutiny. “I am one, who am I?” an unstoppable chanting that gets to his brain and makes him wake up sweating and crying.

He tells Warrick that he’s fine when he finds Nick in the toilet vomiting the little he’s eaten, knows that Warrick doesn’t believe him.

They release his house in two days. The ceiling is more or less patched up and he knows that he’ll have to call someone to permanently fix that, the green T-rug is gone and he hopes that they won’t return it; he doesn’t switch on the TV and tries not to sleep once again.

He fails miserably and dreams of lifeless bodies and Crane once again. This time Warrick’s there, scared, shouting, disappears shortly after while muttering “You don’t know me”.

Grissom gives him nine days to recover. Technically he offers him two whole weeks, but Nick knows that he’ll go stir crazy sooner or later if he stays in his house for too long. He’s already been looking up possible buyers, he just needs to distance himself—ends up sleeping at Archie’s couch for another whole week, at least tries to.

His dreams don’t change much. Sometimes Crane is holding a gun, sometimes he shoots him, sometimes he shoots someone Nick loves. Warrick comes and goes, occasionally Catherine appears just to vanish shortly after, Grissom’s kind and understanding face is altered onto a mask that only shows disappointment in his dreams. Sometimes the person that gets shot is Greg. He even dreams of Melissa and the dead girl, Jane Galloway, getting killed, muttering with her head covered in red dye that’s too thick to be the product and with a smell that’s too metallic—too coppery.

His ceiling gets fixed. He calls a therapist too, asks Catherine for names because he’s pretty lost on the whole thing, convinces himself that he’s only going because Crane has left him badly shaken up. Even if deep down he knows that he’ll end up talking about more stuff with them, stuff that doesn’t involve the stalking.

Greg keeps reappearing in his dreams.

He’s young and fresh, his hair changes, never stays the same along the dreamscape. He smiles, always teasing, always nice and soft. He sometimes apologizes in the dreams, when the red liquid starts pouring from his head instead of from Jane Galloway’s hair, when the bullet wound appears in his chest instead of in Nick’s. Sometimes Greg just laughs, mocking and cruel, but that grin’s a mask, false and plastic like—resembles liquid latex. Sometimes the wound is on Greg’s head and then the liquid turns pink and thickens.

When Nick stops taking the painkillers for the bruises after the fall, he goes back home.

His first session with the therapist has taught him that this is going to be slow and also that he’ll maybe end up going to another therapist for his… other issues.

When he goes back to work everybody welcomes him warmly, he has missed them, actually seeing them and not some inaccurate and monstrous recreation produced by his mind. They are all better here, but he knows all too well that he’s not getting enough sleep when he finally sees Greg again and even if at the beginning the other man is a bit absent, he smiles and Nick has to blink because he truly feels as if the room had lighted up with that gesture.

The soft sentence that Greg let’s go of when he’s saying goodbye after that night’s case is closed makes Nick feel delight-headed.

“I’m glad you’re fine.”

 

XIV.

For the next month he doesn’t spend much of his free time at home. After coming round the fact that he’s not going to be able to get rid of the house, Nick decides to refurbish the living room, bedroom and other areas, at least the ones in which he feels the most exposed. His therapist tells him that this is good for him, that it’ll help his mind get rid of the negative thoughts that it has linked to a certain environment.

He’s getting back from work one afternoon after pulling a double and decides to get into a supermarket just to get a couple of cardboard boxes and light bulbs, because he could have done it on his free day, but to be honest he prefers to invest that time trying to put up the new coffee table that remains disassembled on his living room.

He spends less than ten minutes in between the aisles and by the time he walks out to the register he has to stop dead in his tracks and stare, maybe too intently, at one Greg Sanders talking to the cashier with a worried expression while he hands her some leaflets. His hair looks disheveled and Nick knows that today he had the day off because there was another tech at DNA. Nevertheless, Greg doesn’t stay for long speaking to the girl and marches outside in an abrupt jog. Nick hurries up and goes straight to pay, by the time he’s taking out a couple of bills, the girl—Elizabeth, her name tag supplies— hands him over one of the papers from the stack that Greg had given her.

“I don’t know if you live in the area, but a close friend’s cat just got lost so if you don’t mind… ”she says in an apologetic and meek tone. Nick just takes the paper and reads it, offering her a reassuring smile.

There’s a picture of a calico cat in it, looks old or at least past its youth. Her name’s Freyja, got lost a day ago a couple of blocks away from where they are and if seen or found you can ask for Greg in any of the two numbers below.

He just got Greg’s personal number.

“Thanks, I’ll keep my eyes open” he answers, picking up his things before going outside, the leaflet still tightly held in his hand.

Nick had thought more than once about asking Greg for his number, just because of the sheer amount of times they’ve hung out—all those weekends when Warrick was too busy to go for a drink with him… and now karma had somehow deemed it necessary for him to get it. He is expecting to find the other man outside of the store, maybe fumbling with cello-tape or handing out more of the papers, but the car park is almost as empty as when he got there, except for a bunch of teens who get in at that same moment Nick exits.

Nick gets what he’s bought on the back of his car, fiddles for a couple of seconds with the lid of his phone before getting in. He knows that he should go home, do something, maybe reorganize his record collection, some shelves—then hit the sack, pretend that he’s tired but… calling Greg is so tempting. His rational brain is so against it… Suddenly a voice that’s not his has the damn chance to whisper inside his head, break his whole inner monologue about friendship and properness _Do you ever goof off? Do you ever get a little lost in life? You should_ and before he notices he’s already dialing the mobile phone number that’s written in the sheet of paper. He thinks of hanging up, of backing off before someone picks up… too late though, because he hears a ragged breathing and a clear—

“Hello?”

“Hi, G” he croaks in a strangled gasp, knowing not too well where this is going.

“Is that you Nick?” he hears Greg ask, he sounds confused and breathless, maybe that’s due to whatever he’s doing “Shit man, did Grissom give you my number? Do you need me in the lab or something? Because let me tell you, I’m out for today and not going back until I’ve slept—”

“Nah man, just—went grocery shopping and this girl gave me one of your hand-outs” Nick makes out in time before Greg can continue rambling. He doesn’t want to sound weird or creepy, less after what happened to him and after how he treated Greg with the whole ‘Crimestopper’ article.

“Oh… oh! Yeah, Freyja—you seen her!?” Greg inquires this time, far more enthusiastically, waiting to catch a breath, he did look worried when Nick saw him getting into the supermarket.

“No, G… but I was wondering maybe—you need help looking around? I’m in the area where you lost her and thought that I could lend a hand” he offers, far more hopeful than he has the right to be.

“I dunno man, I… don’t wanna put you under pressure after what happened and—”

“Don’t worry, I’m better—really. Tell me where to find you.”

  
Surprisingly, Greg complies and after a little babbling and a couple of apologies he gives Nick directions to an apartment compound a few blocks away. He gets there in less than five minutes and parks his car in front of them.

Greg’s sitting on the stairs that lead up to a first floor, stands up as soon as Nick pulls over. He doesn’t see him get down and cross the gate, but he’s out with an apologetic smile on his lips by the time Nick’s finished closing. He greets the other man with a nod and Greg reciprocates.

“Hey, you didn’t have to come really—you look like shit” Greg lets out with a snorty laugh.

“That’s rich coming from you Greggo” Nick guffaws, crossing his arms in front of his chest while he takes in the looks the other man is sporting from up close.

His hair is a mess and not a controlled one like it usually is, from where he’s standing Nick can see a couple of twigs tangled on the longest spikes on the top, along a stray cobweb that must have stuck to his jacket while he was crawling around looking for the missing animal. He’s not carrying the missing posters with him anymore and his hands are fumbling with the pockets of the fraying hoodie that he’s wearing, his nails with remains of black nail polish that’s peeling off, which surprises Nick, makes him smile a bit.

“Oh shut up, Nicky” Greg grunts, following Nick’s glare to his hair a ruffling it a bit, maybe trying to get rid of everything that had now settled to live up there.

“Come on man, tell me where you’ve looked and where should we head” Nick laughs, taking a look around. Seems like a quiet neighborhood, not far away from the Strip but far enough to be away of the noise, of people and traffic. Greg must earn more than he does.

“She got out through the bathroom window, through the fire escape, and never came back—so the whole complex and neighborhood should be fair game…” he grumbles while scratching his head, making an expanding motion with both of his arms to emphasize.

Nick laughs again before getting a full explanation of how the whole neighborhood is divided so that each of them can look at different spots while the sun’s still up. They split up and Nick spends the last remaining two hours of sunlight squatting and looking around the ‘kitten hotspots’, as Greg had called them, for the calico. He encounters a similar cat with a different eye color, a bunch of felines that start meowing for food and two kids that ask him to fetch them back a baseball that had fallen into a sewer. By the time he comes back to the front of Greg’s apartment the light that remains is soft, aureate, so different from the one he witnesses almost every day at dusk. The only thing that Nick comes back with is dirt, dust and probably a far more tired expression than he had wished for. Greg doesn’t look much better when he comes running down the corner, seems as tired as Nick, shakes his head as soon as he notices that Nick can see him.

“Don’t worry—I didn’t think we’d find her today either” Greg laughs again. He looks sad and a bit disheartened until he abruptly looks up at Nick. “Don’t you have to work today?”

“Nah, free night… I asked Grissom for an extra one this week as I had to organize stuff at home and such—”

“Are you leaving?” Greg asks this time, out of the blue and with a disconcerted tone that might as well show fear. Nick answers by raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I mean, I should go and grab dinner…”  
“No, no. I meant Las Vegas, the city—are you going back to Texas?” and this time Nick does recognize some kind of deeper uncertainty in those soft umber eyes that are fixed on his.

“No—nah Greggo, I wouldn’t even dream of it” Nick’s a bit bewildered, shakes his head before looking up at the other man, who is now worrying his lower lip with his brows furrowed “Dude, are you ok?” he asks afterwards, because he doesn’t know what kind of relationship Greg had with his pet, but the behavior Nick’s witnessing is definitely weird even by the usual Greg Sanders standards.

“Yeah, just tired—wanna go up and grab a beer? We can also order some pizza, my treat for helping out” he smiles almost immediately avoiding the topic at hand, and Nick is too surprised and maybe also too grateful for this spontaneous outburst from the other man to care.

Sooner than he can notice he’s following Greg through the gate and up the stairs, falling a few steps behind. Greg hasn’t looked back since he started ranting about how good the pizza place that delivers round here is and how fast the food usually arrives.

Greg switches on the lights as soon as they get in and Nick has to admit that he was expecting a far messier place. To begin with, the fact that Greg’s paycheck is bigger than his is painfully obvious in every detail of the house. From the floor-plan to the furniture; there’s a small bathroom not far away from the entrance, which has a short hallway that leads into the living area with an adjacent kitchen. Nick supposes that Greg’s bedroom and another bathroom could be further away. The place is well furnished, modern but with a homely feel that may be due to the wooden furniture, the woolen blanket that’s perched over the sofa also helps. He has an impressive entertainment center stacked with a pretty big TV, a couple of consoles and a video player, along with countless shelves full of VHS tapes, books and CDs; not to forget a huge sound system that rests not far away from a coffee table. The walls and living area adorned with innumerable pictures. Nick lets out a soft whistle after following Greg, who stares disapprovingly at his shod feet before guiding him into the living room before getting rid of his worn sneakers with a kick.

“I’ll go get the drinks” Greg announces casually and after seeing that Nick is not going to sit without being offered to, he points towards the sofa “get comfortable man, you can take off the boots too” before he disappears around the corner.

“Thanks, but I prefer them on” Nick counters, sitting down, still entranced by how meticulous Greg’s seems to be ordering his stuff, despite the messy tornado aura he exudes.

“Your pick!” he hears Greg shout from across the closest door to the hallway. “As it happens with my coffee you’re going to be so thankful that I like you Nicholas Stokes, because my mother brought me some nice export beer that I don’t usually share—” Greg continues speaking but his voice gets muffled by something, probably him sticking his head inside the refrigerator. Nick’s now looking at the pictures in the coffee table and behind him—there’s a ton, taken with very different people and in really disparate places.

Some of them are family pictures, some with the ones that Nick’s assumes are Greg’s parents, others with his grandparents who have acquired some kind of reputation across the lab for every quote that Greg makes regarding their ancient Norwegian knowledge. There are also some pictures of Greg with a man who looks a bit older than him and a bit too close to be called a friend—he’s stuck to Greg’s side in all of their photos, seems satisfied with their proximity, with the contact, some taken in paradise like beaches and locations, Greg still wearing a wetsuit in some and so young that it makes Nick chuckle.

Other photographs are more recent, Nick knows because of the colors and Greg’s age. Most of them are taken in Vegas and a short black girl with curly auburn hair appears with Greg in most of them, the girl that was in the supermarket is also with both in a couple of them and Nick doesn’t even know how to interpret the relationship that he’s seeing. Because upon a first look he’d have said that the short girl had the same attitude towards Greg that the guy in the surfing pictures had, but after a closer analysis she does have that demeanor towards the blonde girl more than towards Greg. Nick feels like he hasn’t been a CSI long enough or that he won’t be good enough if he isn’t able to discern their relationship before Greg—

“Those are from our trip to Grand Canyon last summer, I always end up being the third wheel in those, dunno why they keep inviting me” Nick hears behind him and almost jumps out of his seat before he sees Greg holding up a beer bottle, cold, condensation still visible on it, his phone peeking from his jean’s pocket.

“Girlfriends?” Nick asks—instead of shouting and telling Greg that coming at him from behind after a dude that had been living in his attic almost kills him is a bad idea.

“Yep” Greg answers popping the p, sitting in an armchair not far away from the sofa—far enough to grant personal space but close enough not to impede conversation. He takes a swig from his bottle, his eyes still hold a bit of sadness and from time to time he looks in the direction of an open window on the other side of the room; like if he was counting on seeing a fur-ball appear through it any minute now. “I mean, Liz tried to set me up with a couple of her friends some time ago, so is not so bad having them as pals” he comments, finally looking in Nick’s direction.

“I mean… sounds far better than Catherine doing it for you” Nick snorts, making Greg finally laugh in cue with one of his eyebrows raised.

“Shit man, I’m so sorry, but your reputation precedes you.”

“Ladies man? Or most eligible bachelor of the whole precinct? Because I’ve heard a couple more during the last year” he adds humorlessly, making Greg frown for a bit, his fingers tightly gripped to the neck of the bottle before he drinks again.

“You—I’m really sorry for what happened with the whole article, I had no idea of who had written it and…” Greg sounds repentant and scared once again and Nick wants to feel some kind of victory for having put some fear into Greg’s carelessness, feels sorry instead, doesn’t want to see his friend like this, knows it wasn’t his fault. Greg’s not some kind of psycho, he’s just a goofball that may be too smart and careless for his own good.

“Water under the bridge man, told you it was cool” Nick cuts him short, bumping his knee against Greg’s, which makes the other man look up, tight-lipped, nods a couple of times before he steadies his gaze once again.

“I just—after what we had talked about that day at the diner, I thought that we were somehow past the private life and job life separation but I understand if we are not like, that close… I’m totally cool with it! I didn’t invite you over to convince you that we are, this is just simple and plain thankfulness—”

“G, you are my friend and I was pretty tightly wound that day… those two days! So—don’t think more about it” Nick gets to say before the other man quits his rambling “I don’t like oversharing with people around the lab… but if you wanna ask stuff, ‘s okay” Greg stares, his mouth open and his gaze astray until the bell rings, making him stumble up while muttering something about the pizzas and money.

Nick doesn’t look away from him, gets lost for some seconds on those long legs and how usually he’s unable to see them due to the lab coat. He soon forgets about it though, because the food smells heavenly and he hasn’t eaten much since lunch.

They dig in without getting back onto the previous conversation. Greg starts telling him about how once he caught the delivery guy flirting with their landlady to get his rent paid and how his dog pissed on her doorstep instead, and some other gossip that’s been going around the lab for the days that Nick’s been gone. Greg doesn’t say anything that may be related to Nick or the Crane Case. In spite of Nick knowing that Greg’s intimate with Archie and that the A/V tech has been revising those freaky tapes for a whole week, so they can present the best bits in court and get a longer sentence for him, it does make him glad that the topic doesn’t come up—because it’s the only thing that he’s been talking about for a whole month.

Nick doesn’t know exactly how but they banter some more about work and somehow he ends up explaining to Greg how rodeos work, because the man doesn’t seem to get—or doesn’t want to—the appeal of any sport that involves animals , Nick suspects that of any sport in particular, because after they’ve finished eating and they’re cracking the third cold one open, Greg admits that he only has ever been good at chess and bowling, and that if he ever gets in the field he doesn’t know how he’ll do it to help the night shift win the annual softball game.

Some more talking and suddenly they are pushing the coffee table back together and Greg is hooking his old N64 up to play _Mario Kart_. They are on their third Grand Prix when Nick notices the time and forces Greg to pause the game. He looks all fired up and concentrated, got rid of his hoodie maybe on the third race and his shirt is clinging and bunching in places where shirts shouldn’t , which makes Nick have to swallow—hard.

“Man, I think I should go home, it’s late and—”

“Stay” Greg blurts out, and Nick sits back down with his legs crossed, stares at the other man as if he had monkeys climbing up his head “I mean you’ve been drinking and I have a perfectly comfortable couch—you can even take the bed so that you can’t say anything about my hospitality when you are back at the outside world”.

“Shit dude, I’ll stay but there’s no way I’m taking your bed” he retorts, stretches out a bit before looking in Greg’s direction and nodding towards the TV “rematch?”

By the time Nick insists on going to bed it’s half past three and Greg refuses to let go that Nick won two straight rounds; even if he kinda lost it when they started changing the names of half the characters to people they actually know—he’s still trying not to picture Ecklie dressed up as Wario. He herds Greg to bed and feels pretty satisfied when he had deduced that the only acceptable looking areas of the house were going to be the public ones, as with just a peek he’s able to see a mess of shelves, posters and piles of clothing strewn all over the floor.

After Nick gets rid of his boots, trousers and finally lays down he thinks that he’s going to have a horrible night, that the nightmares plaguing him will be full of Greg, truculent and creepy stuff or both—but for once he sleeps well and doesn’t wake up until he feels a fuzzy hot ball curled up against his feet, which appears along the first lights, came out accompanied by the chilly morning air through the still cracked open window.

 

XV.

It’s not the first time that they’ve played _Name that chemical compound_. To be more precise it’s not the first time that Greg was bored to death and has pulled them inside the lab and instead of giving them the answer in a straightforward way he’s started an imaginary timer to make them guess. As far as Nick remembers most of the times he’s won; because you don’t get a minor in chemistry for kicks and then not use it being part of a Crime Lab. So when this time he asks for a price just to humor Greg, the other man visibly flinches and stares unmoving at him before he has a grin plastered on his face.

“I’d say that we can go over to the diner and get something to eat if you finish early—but I have the feeling that you are going to decline” Greg comments, capping the pen he’s used to draw the chemical formula on the board before he gets it into his breast pocket “So for a change—wanna go to the cinema?” he asks, and all the tension that Nick’s arms were charged with melts, giving his companion a gentle smile.

“I mean I’d have accepted the meal, but yeah you’re right—not gonna agree to another one after what you did with the pizzas the other day” this gains Nick a shrug from Greg, who props himself up against the countertop next to him.

“You know, it doesn’t have to be immediate because I know that you’re surrounded by admirers and ladies who want to spend some time with you…but if in a couple of weeks our free day aligns once again and you just wanna—”

  
“Geez man, it’s not like you’re asking me out or anything, I’m not Sara” Nick laughs before he notices that his pager has beeped a couple of times and that he had been totally distracted while speaking to Greg.

“Yeah right, you just look sooooo alike that I hadn’t even noticed” Greg guffaws before shooing Nick away with a couple of pushes “Now come on lover boy—go do what you have to, save the day! I can’t get shit done with you and your beep beep around” he complains childishly, letting the crystal door swing close behind Nick before he goes back to his stool, and Nick would swear that the other man does look up from the microscope when he’s heading away to Trace.

It doesn’t take too long for Sara and him to crack the case and he’s dumping his stuff on his locker when Catherine appears with a defeated posture and a tired stance out of the hallway, her arms are tense and Nick perks his head up from cleaning his boots to properly look at her.

“Bad case?” he asks, his tone soft an understanding before she glances in his direction with a frayed smile on her lips.

“Yeah, two girls killed an old lady for a cat they couldn’t even keep” she lets out, dumping her card and a folder inside her locker, passing her finger over one of Lindsey’s photos that Nick knows she has stuck there.

“Wanna go grab something to eat?” Nick asks, closing his own closet, knowing for sure that he’s going to get a no for an answer, which Catherine reaffirms by shaking her head.

“Not today, Nicky, gotta go and be a mom for a while before Lindsey forgets she has one” her tone is joking and not too heavy, but Nick knows that this case’s been tough on her, knows that if cases with kids are his kryptonite, Catherine has to suffer a gazillion times more just because she has to fear that something will ever happen to her own child.

“Thought that you told us that Eddie had her this week?”

This makes Catherine laugh before she closes her locker too, Nick follows her out of the room and out of the building.

“I think we’ve known each other long enough for you to understand what kind of man Eddie is” she sighs with a dry laugh on the verge of escaping from her lips.

Nick answers by laughing and shaking his head, of course he does. He also knows that he’s had one of the luckiest childhoods ever for having the loving and caring parents he had. Even if they didn’t excel in all the departments, they still tried, and taking into account that they were taking care of seven kids, that’s saying a lot.

They are walking past the front desk when they see Greg talking to Judy, and Nick maybe looks a bit less through the side of his eye than he wants to and gulps more loudly than he intended to, because as soon as they both have passed and said bye, Catherine stops and stares at him pointedly flashing another one of her smiles, a confident taunting one.

“Still angry with Greg for what he did? You know he’s a good kid, he probably meant no harm—” she starts to say, but when Nick shakes his head and clicks his tongue she stops, regarding him with a thorough look.

“Don’t look at me like that, we talked, he apologized—we are fine” he tries to explain in a babble that makes Cath raise an eyebrow. Maybe he had sounded far too defensive?

“Hadn’t realized you two were so close” she huffs. Catherine seems a little surprised, maybe amused, all the anger that could have been there some months ago when she discovered Greg helping out with a case gone “You know, maybe you should invite him over next time we hang out after solving a case… After all, he does help crack most of them” she adds, waving her hand dismissively at Nick before she goes away, leaving him looking puzzled and a bit out of place.

“Maybe I will” he whispers for himself, almost immediately shuts up because Ecklie is passing by and the last thing he wants to be is seen by the day shift supervisor talking alone in the entrance of the precinct.

By the time he gets home it’s hot and the sun’s already out, he takes some already cooked food from the fridge and gets it into the microwave. For a minute and a half, while his food heats, Nick stares at his living room, quite satisfied with how everything’s looking and the little to no similitude it has to how it used to look. He’ll probably comment it to Nora in their next session, she keeps repeating that having a sense of pride and self-worth after not being able to get into his house for almost a month is important.

He eats breakfast-dinner while watching the early morning news and reading the newspaper, leaving his mail for later because right now the only thing his body can take is food and sleep. Nick washes the dishes and closes the curtains before bolting the door, which he is also relearning to do.

Something does hold him up after getting his pajama pants on though.

He is about to put his phone down to charge, when he suddenly sees that there’s a message. He checks it. It’s Greg and it’s not the first SMS the other man has sent him, it is the first one he’s received out of their work schedule though and not work-related.

_HMU when u dcide on a d8 ;)_

If anyone asked him he’d repeatedly deny that he stared for five minutes into the greenish screen of his phone and waited to see if his brain provided him with a more logic and complex answer than a simple ok. He finally decides not to answer and goes to bed.

The message sits in his inbox for a week and a half, until he’s erasing old messages and spam and sees it there, almost mocking, with that winky face at the end—the date and the unanswered state of the text almost jumping out of the screen. His fingers hover over the erase option, knows that it really isn’t one, knows that answering doesn’t really matter either, because his week has been particularly shitty and Warrick and everyone else were busy tonight. So it doesn’t really take him long to enter his agenda, looking down to one of the latest names he’s saved under the letter G.

Nick stares and stares some more. He hasn’t really been able to see Greg much, hasn’t spent time with him for almost a month and—he doesn’t know where he is going. He’s friends with Greg but does he want to… get to that point? He is attracted to him, ok? And if he wasn’t a work partner Nick would have probably invited him over to get drunk on his couch so he could afterwards kiss Greg ‘til his soft pink lips were all red and glossy.

Realization runs over him like a sixteen-wheeled truck—he _wants_ to kiss Greg!

But again, it’s Greg he’s talking about here. Hyperactive, full of life, adventurous Greg, the Greg that probably thinks that Nick’s life is dull and that his idea of a good night is just some old man bullshit. Liquid latex Greg who probably goes to gay clubs, because he is open enough about his sexuality—fearless—and God does Nick envy him.

Greg spends an awful amount of time with him though, in and now out of work too, so maybe Greg doesn’t find him so boring, maybe Greg also considers him a friend; Nick’s not crazy enough to think anything else about the looks Greg gives him or the flirting.

Greg doesn’t do any of that with Warrick though, and Nick supposes that maybe Greg does enjoy spending time with him, going out to have breakfast or a drink, and ok, maybe Nick does want to go to the cinema with Greg. Let him talk and rant about how much he likes or dislikes what they are watching, indirectly annoy the shit out of that asshole of a boyfriend that wasn’t able to appreciate the uncut diamond he had on his hands.

Suddenly Nick’s hand is not hovering anymore, he’s pushed the green button and he’s hearing the tones go beep-beep.

Then a cough.

A voice comes later.

Afterwards, Nick may have said something.

“Hey—”

 

 

**Betelgeuse** , also designated α Orionis (Latinised to Alpha Orionis), is on average the ninth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. If the human eye could view all wavelengths of radiation, Betelgeuse would be the brightest star in the night sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made I playlist while writing Nick's POV parts that you can check [ here](https://open.spotify.com/user/midna_ronoa/playlist/4g6DGcWWEVHzqkUdxlXW3y?si=0Z9d45AoQsGkCljzsQlBLg)  
> I don't know when I'll finish editing part three and I don't wanna give tentative dates because my creative process has been a horrible mess for the past couple of months, hopefully I'll have the first chapter up by July.  
> Leave a review if you enjoyed the fic!! Feedback means the world to me.  
> You can also find me on [ Tumblr ](https://midwrites.tumblr.com/)  
> I also have a [ Twitter](https://twitter.com/MidWrites) account but it's currently a WIP as I haven't posted shit on it.


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